From the underground graffiti scene where he got his name, to his art being sent into space, and a current solo exhibition at Sotheby’s, Ryan Wilson aka ThankYouX continues to soar.
ThankYouX’s distinctive style blurs the line between digital and physical art. Since jumping into NFTs three years ago, he has mesmerized collectors with art that is perfect for viewing on digital screens.
His signature cubes and hybrid physical and digital paintings are on display in his inertia solo exhibition Sotheby’s in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles.
“With inertia, it’s an overview of everything that I’ve been working on for the past few years. There’s digital, there’s physical, there’s paintings with embedded screens in them. The past few years have been heavily digital for me with moving images and looped videos, and I wanted to have people who collect my paintings feel that same movement that is on the screens,” says ThankYouX.
ThankYouX inertia opening (Sotheby’s)
“It’s again another kind of trojan horse for me doubling down on what’s been happening in the past few years with digital stuff. I wanted to tie it all together. The show is all about movement. You see different brush strokes going different ways, in different color ways and each one represents a different thing.”
“Whether it’s the ocean, the wind, the clouds, planes going in a certain way, cars driving another way or people walking certain ways, there’s all these different little hidden things in each painting but I wanted you to feel like the painting itself is moving over time.”
Graffiti night owl marked the beginning of ThankYouX
The arc of ThankYouX’s career began in 2009 as an underground artist who derived a sense of freedom and thrill by doing graffiti all hours of the night and leaving the words “Thank you” and an “X” to mark his work. This stuck as his artist name after numerous art blogs started to refer to him as ThankYouX.
“It was like this…
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